After attending a Rose Mini Seminar with GRF Sam, I learned how valuable an online persona would be in a professional setting. Not only does it allow me to advertise myself to potential employers and networks, it allows me to build the image I want people to see me as. Sam went through things such as basics, biographies, usernames, and following patterns. Using all the information he gave us, the class was able to “build” who they wanted to be online.

COnsidering that I do not use social media often and all my social media is private, the session really got me thinking of whether or not I should actually pursue making profiles on various platforms. In the end, I decided not to do it right now because I am too busy to keep up with it; and keeping up with posts is one thing Sam said is essential to successfully creating an online persona.

Before entering college, my entire online presence consisted of my (rather empty) Facebook profile. I didn’t really see any reason to be an active online citizen, since I preferred in-person or more private means of communication. Even since coming to Cornell, I just barely created a LinkedIn profile. However, after attending this seminar, its clear how important an online personality is. For perspective employers, this is often their first point of contact with you. While it may seem unfair when you can’t talk to these people yourself, there is actually an advantage. That is, you have complete control over your online personality. Aside from keeping everything true, you control the tone and attitude you project online. Therefore, it is extremely important to develop a strong and consistent online personality across multiple platforms, and I plan to do so moving forward.

So I decided to choose this talk because, honestly, my LinkedIn is a mess and since we’re in college I figured this talk would most definitely address it. And it did! GRF Sam talked about safety and presentation online. He addressed how our profiles should have a consistent presence across social media platforms to promote consistency and a sense of professionalism. When we did get to LinkedIn, as I knew we inevitably would, I learned tips such as once you’ve been established, a little thank you to an event invitation goes a long way. I also learned that apparently, people have personal websites to promote themselves and their social media accounts. I think that’s the most you can do to present yourself professionally. I’m not sure whether I’ll do that yet, but thanks to this talk I’m grateful to have learned of the option!

Last week I went to a seminar where we talked about to to cultivate your online persona. As a premed bio major, I haven’t really had to use websites such as LinkedIn or Handshake because I can find internships/other extracurriculars through other means. Still, I thought that it was really important for me to at least be aware about how I should present myself online, and I’m really glad that I went because I learned a lot! For example, I didn’t know that you could use Twitter/ Facebook professionally. Sometimes in interviews for jobs/internships, employers will ask you questions about relevant topics in your field. You can use Twitter to follow important figures in your field so that you can answer any questions that they might have. Also, I think that social media is a big part of our daily lives, so it makes sense to use it in order to further your career professionally. We hear so many stories of someone posting something terrible on social media and then getting fired because of it, and so it’s really important to make sure that your social media stays professional, at least publicly. This seminar was really useful and I’m really glad that I went!

The main intention of this seminar was to help students recognize the uses of professional online media and give us helpful hints and tricks toward our online presence. For me, LinkedIn is the main site that I think of that is closely connected to a professional online social media. Towards the end of the seminar GRF Sam had everyone write a personal bio for a platform of their choosing and present it to the group. I really enjoyed this portion as I was able to get helpful feedback and encouragement towards my writing. Additionally, I was given inspiration by hearing the statements of other students. This was my first professional advice seminar and I really enjoyed it. GRF Sam made it comfortable to ask questions and voice my opinion out loud. I would definitely recommend a similar seminar to other students looking for a general introduction into the online professional world!

Last week I attended the mini-seminar on creating an online professional persona. Given that I’m starting to think about applying to graduate schools, I’ve been wanting to develop my online presence to suit this purpose. This seminar was really ideal for what I had in mind.

In the seminar, GRF Sam discussed the ways in which you could use social media for professional purposes, as well as more mainstream professional networking sites like linkedin or academia.edu. He also gave instruction about how to write professional bios, and which kinds of information and phrasing might be appropriate depending on the site. Bio writing is something I always struggle with, so it was great to get some direct tips and feedback from Sam about my content. I also learned that academia.edu is more suited to my needs than linkedin, which was a really valuable piece of information. For me, it was great to get professional advice like this from someone who was more familiar with academia as opposed to other sectors. In this way, the seminar was really suited to my needs.

Overall, I found the seminar helpful, and have been equally satisfied with other seminars on related professional development topics I have attended at Rose in the past. I have found these events to be very valuable and strongly recommend others check them out in the future.

Through this activity, I started thinking more about the value in creating a strong online persona to connect to academic peers and prospective employers. At the end of the talk everyone who attended wrote and read aloud a short description of themselves that they might use online. I realized through this activity that I am a generally private person, so it’s hard for me to want to share my interests with other people. My description turned out really bland as a result. I think that being a shy person always makes interviews and self-promotion difficult.

After this experience I realized that I need to practice explaining my interests in the hopes that in the future I will be able to express myself both online and offline to peers, colleagues, and potential employers. While it’s important to be humble I also think that I owe it to myself to put my best foot forward. I’m going to try writing a description of my achievements and interests without the intention of ever sharing it as a way of encouraging myself to produce a fuller description of myself. This description could then be modified and used online or in an interview. I also plan on updating my LinkedIn to showcase more of my achievements and to develop my own website to share my work and my perspective.

Yesterday night I attended a workshop about creating an online persona hosted by GRF Sam. This was an awesome session because we learned about factors that could be crucial to our professional success. We talked about how managing our privacy on Facebook could be crucial because often times friends can tag you in posts that you don’t necessarily want potential employers to see. Facebook allows extensive opportunities for managing privacy, and if you navigate that correctly it can definitely help out when potential employers are searching for you online. We also talked about the possibility of creating a personal website. This is something I have always wanted to do and we were able to view some examples and talk about what content would be appropriate to post on a personal website.

The best part of the session was constructing potential bios that we could use on our platforms. We practiced varying size and structure depending on what platform it is. For example, Twitter bios are usually short and witty while LinkedIn bios can be long and detailed about your interests and previous experience that is relevant to future positions. We were able to share our bios and get critique from other attendees and Sam (as a graduate student in English, it was extremely helpful.) Overall, I’m so happy I attended this productive session!